House GOP plays Solyndra for all it's worth

President Barack Obama’s Capitol Hill opponents, who have waited for a scandal that would get traction outside Washington, aren’t wasting the opportunity by resorting to calls for impeachment or raging about socialism and “death panels.”

Text Size

-

+

reset

POLITICO 44

Instead, they’re letting the facts about Solyndra speak for themselves with well-timed leaks and high-profile hearings on the $535 million federal loan guarantee to the California solar company that declared bankruptcy last month. The FBI raid of Solyndra’s headquarters earlier this month helped, too.

Solyndra didn’t just drop into the Republicans’ laps, however. The GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee spent several months battling the Obama administration over access to tens of thousands of pages of internal documents related to the loan guarantee.

“This is a textbook example of how congressional oversight is effectively done,” said Randall Davis, a former GOP counsel for the House panel when it was known as the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee.

“You get all of the data and information and emails and documents and interviews; you laboriously go through them; you pick out the most relevant and damaging,” Davis added.

Even Jon Stewart has noticed.

“You know how whenever there’s a scandal, Congress holds a hearing to investigate the matter, but they usually just prove themselves to be clueless grandstanders?” Stewart asked during an episode of “The Daily Show” last week. “Watch Congressman Brian Bilbray lay some serious solar smackdown on the executive director of the Department of Energy’s loan program.”

After showing a clip of Bilbray, a former member of a top California environmental board, pressing DOE’s Jonathan Silver on the technological specifics of China’s work on solar panels, Stewart opined: “I have no idea what the f—- that congressman is talking about. But here’s the thing, he does. Bilbray 2012!”

Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Energy and Commerce leaders may have learned some lessons from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who got off to a rocky start earlier this year as chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“The sense of [Issa] as a guy who was just going to crash ahead and make wild accusations and not do serious oversight, all of it had an impact,” Ornstein said. “What you see here is a committee that’s trying to pick its spots. And when it picks its spots, it’s trying to do it in a fashion where they don’t give the other side enough rope to hang them.”

Energy and Commerce Republicans are leaking their best stuff to the press, earning them favorable coverage and drawing even more interest to their work at critical moments like on the morning of a big hearing.

Last Wednesday, The Washington Post published a front-page article about several emails showing the White House scrambling to find out about the status of Solyndra’s loan to determine whether Obama or Vice President Joe Biden could speak at a big groundbreaking event.

A day later, Republicans released 18 pages of administration emails, including one in which Office of Management and Budget officials worried about the “optics” if Solyndra went bankrupt during the 2012 presidential campaign.

As they’ve talked to press, Republicans have also shown restraint in not getting ahead of the Solyndra affair.

No one in the GOP has uttered “impeachment,” at least not yet. Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of Energy and Commerce’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, did call last week for the resignation of Silver. But he is no big fish like Energy Secretary and Nobel laureate Steven Chu.

“I want to see more before I come to that judgment” about Chu, said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). “I don’t know what Chu knew or didn’t know.”

This is becoming rather ugly for Barack Obama, his wife is now linked to this corruption.

Same time Solyndra secured this half billion dollars of taxpayer money, George Kaiser made a ten-thousand dollar donation to Michelle Obama's "Urban Health Initiative" She is one of the original founders of this group. This directly links Michelle Obama to this pay-for-play corruption.

Solyndra is the one thats helping ruin the solar energy.I'm sure there are a lot more.It's always a drip,drip,drip.New evidence always pop up.obama is the one who helped solyndra get their money.He is responsible for all this scandal.Lets keep looking and we will find more.I think obama getting a pass from print msm.I haven't been watching cable for awhile and don't know what they're doing for this scandal.Somebody I say somebody has to be indicted for these crimes against the USA.

playing solyndra? GOP waiting for scandal? Hey Darren, why not write it from the angle where outrage with solyndra is totally reasonable and needed. why not highlight the fact that half a billion dollars was flushed away into a bankrupt company with not much due dilligent and vetting. why not let us all know how many middle class tax payers who paid a quarter of their earnings made up this half a billion dollar waste? funny how as a regular citizen, i see less of anyone playing up solyndra or republicans waiting in the wing for the scandal but more of a stick in the face of how incredibly out of touch and waste government is with my tax dollars. this administration thinks they are entittled to our tax dollars. how else would explain the ease and lack of stewardship they showed in throwing half billions worth of hard working tax paying citizens away in such a obvious risky venture.

Why does the Politico headline condemn the investigation rather than the Administration's rigging of sweetheart deals for a half billion dollar give away to a political donor?

Between this, Evergreen Solar, the "friends & family" cash flow (such as the Maxine Waters deal) and the massive payouts to the Wall Street donors, the first Stimulus was clearly tainted - significant portions of it were used for political paybacks.

Could they please use their own $s if they want to give out a 2nd one? Maybe Soros & Buffet could fund the next Solyndra, while leaving Buffet's secretary's now-famous tax dollars on the table to actually run the company.

Ohhh, those evil Republicans, how dare they ask any questions about how a billionaire Obama bundler received and lost $535 million dollars of OUR money in a green scam that produced solar panels that sold for less than they cost to manufacture or how this Billionaire fundraisers loan was structured to make sure that he got his money back before the taxpayers.

U.S. Justice Department agencies failed to minimize the cost of conferences, in one case serving $16 muffins and in another case serving beef Wellington appetizers that cost $7.32 per serving, an audit found.

“Some conferences featured costly meals, refreshments, and themed breaks that we believe were indicative of wasteful or extravagant spending,” the Justice Department’s inspector general wrote in a report released today.

If the media won't present Solyndra why should the GOP? Why won't the media tell us about FAST and FURIOUS? Why won't the media tell us about gifting to ACORN Affiliates? Why won't the media tell us about GE's gift giving and government grants it recieved as payola? Why won't the media tell us what Buffet's Companies got for his largesse?

Why has the media ignorned Obamacare waivers to his campaign contributors?

The Koch brothers’ company, Koch Industries, has been a big player in both campaign donations and lobbying. Koch Industries currently leads the oil and gas industry as the top contributor to federal candidates and parties, and is the fifth highest lobbying spender in the industry this year. Soros’ hedge fund, Soros Fund Management, has also lobbied at the federal level, but employees have not made campaign donations through a Soros-sponsored political action committee. Because of the notable lobbying involvement of a Soros-funded think tank, the Open Society Policy Center, this group's data is also included for the purpose of this comparison:

According to federal lobbying reports, Koch Industries’ top issues include energy, environmental, tax and homeland security policies. The Open Society Policy Center has mainly lobbied on issues relating to foreign relations, civil rights, and law enforcement policy. The graph below outlines these organizations lobbying history since 1998 (click on graph for full ):

VERDICT: When it comes to the combination of institutional lobbying, 527 group donations and PAC expenditures, Koch Industries far out-spends Soros’ hedge fund and think tank, $57.4 million to $12.8 million. Most of this money is attributable to lobbying expenditures.